At 22, my body is not as robust as it once was. This past spring I developed a mild allergy to pollen, and today I was told by my eye doctor that I have a small ulcer in my left cornea that might never go away. I suppose that this is just how it is, getting “old”: your body starts reacting differently to things, and foods that used to be your favorite no longer agree with you whatsoever.

Food has tasted flat-out weird to me the past couple of days. A slice of pizza had a bitter aftertaste, my egg-cheese-tomato from the deli yesterday morning was unspeakably sour. Today, when a slice of watermelon tasted a lot like the cymbal I was dared to lick in high school, I realized something had to be wrong with my taste buds. Something was definitely, definitely weird.

I googled my symptoms, entering “bitter or metallic taste in mouth” on WebMD, and was directed to a short article suggesting that the problem might be “Pine Mouth.”

Essentially, Pine Mouth is a rare and bizarre allergic reaction to pine nuts (yep, pine nuts were definitely on the salad I ordered on Friday) that causes a chemical warp of your taste buds, causing everything you eat to taste acerbic or tart. The incurable condition was discovered for the first time in Belgium in 2001, and usually lasts between one and four weeks before it goes away on its own.

What causes this random reaction is still a bit of a mystery, but researchers suggest that there are both edible and inedible pine nuts, and that the inedible pine nuts continue to be exported and sold to food distributors because they look and taste exactly like their chill counterparts.

So, yeah: pine nuts. They are elusive, and might ruin your cheese-tasting date, if you have one.  Beware! –Christina Drill